Why is Auburn playing Mississippi College in basketball?

Maui

Is it an exhibition? I thought you couldn't schedule D-2 schools unless it's for exhibition

Tennessee opened with D2 Lenoir-Rhyme

Because we couldn't get a D1 game that wouldn't hurt our RPI/new metric. DII games don't count, so it won't bring it RPI down.

You don't get how this works

Charles Barkley has said that the toughest individual player that he ever faced was my high school teammate Anthony Hicks when Auburn played MS College back in the early 80’s. Anthony was Six five and about 230 lbs of hard rock muscle.
Just because a team is Division 2 does not mean they don’t have some good players.
Anthony Hicks was one of those players years ago. He was a SEC quality basketball player that was overlooked and played at a small school.